"Hi Genesis,

here's a long technobabble that I wrote about lenses, which you may find useful:

The logic works like this:

* I don't want to use flash. In relatively small areas, flash 'works' but causes evil eyes, and washes out all the colors. Yuck. This means I have to work with natural light.

* Dogs move. Fast. To stop motion, conventional wisdom says you need a shutter speed of at least 1/100 or faster. I prefer 1/250 or so. Any slower and the dog may be stopped, but a foot will be blurred. This is a matter of personal preference, but I really like to freeze the dog in motion.

* Because a fast shutter speed is needed, "IS", or image stabilization, is relatively useless. The conventional wisdom says that you want to use IS when you are shooting at a speed slower than the width of the zoom you're using. eg., if you're shooting at 50mm, 1/50 or slower would require stabilization. *For the purposes of shooting moving dogs or people indoors, IS is a waste of money*. That being said, it's a VERY useful function when taking hand-held indoor pictures of sleeping dogs or babies/children, as you could go down as slow as 1/10 or so (2-3 or even 4 stops) and still get workable photos (in that example). Specifically, my consumer 28-135 lens is a f/3.5 to 5.6 lens. At 28mm, it can open to 3.5, and at 135, it can open to 5.6. That's pretty 'slow'. The IS on the lens 'buys' me two stops, but really isn't fast enough to get any useful indoor pictures.

* Conventional wisdom suggests that a maximum aperature of f/2.8 can capture indoor scenes. I think that this only works for either slow moving or still objects. From the lens renting I've done, and the playing with the technology, I think a lens at f/1.8 or faster is really required.

(by the way, the 'full' f-stops are: 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, and so on. Anything else is usually a 1/3 stop inbetween. Each full stop lets in twice (or 1/2) as much light, meaning that you need to double or half the length of the shutter speed to get the same exposure at a given ISO setting. And, the ISO settings, which go like 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200 accomplish the same thing. The tradeoff is that the higher you go in ISO, the 'noiser' (tiny little random dots) the image gets. My camera is quite noisy at 1600, and doesn't do 3200 (some do). )

All that stuff being said, "zoom" lenses don't (generally) go faster than f/2.8. Plus, those are the most expensive zooms (over $1200 each). They give very good images and lots of flexibility, but really honestly don't let you capture dogs in mid-air with indoor light. (Zooms let you change the image size and 'pull' in an image. They give you the most flexibility).

It's my opinion that I have to go to 'prime' lenses. They can make primes that have very large aperatures (1.4, 1.8, etc) that cost much less than the top end lenses do, and cover 99.9% of all shots I'd generally do.

Here on, I talk only about what Canon makes, because that's what I know about. Nikon has a similar lineup.

(Lenses shorter than 50mm aren't good for single dog shots, as they're too wide, usually. That's something that you have to decide).

50mm (usually good for 3/4 body shots, or whole std. poodles) lenses come in the 1.2L (the "L" means luxury, and usually means the very best that they make) for about $1400, the 1.4 for about $300, and a 1.8 for $90. I think the 1.4 is the way to go here, giving the best compromise between build quality, image quality, weight, and cost.

85mm (good for head and shoulders shots) come in a 1.2L (about $1900), and a 1.8 at about $330. The 85/1.2L is sometimes called the 'magic cannonball' because it can take some really fantastic images that no other lens can do. If you have the budget for that bad boy, by all means buy it. Otherwise, the 1.8 will do fine.

at 135mm, the only lens to consider is the f/2.0L. It's about $900. As you can see, the larger you get in zoom, the smaller the aperatures can be. That means that the more zoom you use, the more light you need to make it work. <sigh> Canon did make a 200mm 1.8L lens, but it sold for $5000, and weighed about 12lbs. It was THE lens to have if you were a professional photographer needing that length. It is now out of production.

So, while I love zooms for their flexibility, for taking photos of dogs indoors, my only recommendations are for primes. Someone once told me that "zooms are for amateurs, and primes are for pros, because primes force you to think about what you're doing and where you're sitting, while a zoom lets you make up for poor positioning with a change in zoom".

So there you go. You now have my full opinion on lenses, including recommendations. I'm personally setting aside the cash to buy the 50/1.4 and the 135/2.0L (total: about $1100 or so). I'll later on buy a nice zoom, like the 70-200 f/4, which is 1/2 the weight of the 2.8, so it travels much better... but for taking show pictures, those two lenses are the way to go.


Regards,

Bernard"